Martine Escadeillas, a 24-year-old secretary, disappeared from her home on December 8, 1986. She left behind only bloody traces and her body was never found.
The trial of his alleged murderer opens this Friday, 35 years after the facts, in Toulouse.
Joël Bourgeon, father of a family a priori quiet, and who protests his innocence after summary confessions, has never been worried for three decades.
Until a letter revives one of the last cold cases in the legal annals.
No DNA analysis, just blood group comparisons, let alone phone records or autopsy reports.
This Friday, the Assize Court of Haute-Garonne will go back in time and the thread of an old-fashioned investigation to write the epilogue of a 35-year-old cold case and the murder without body of Martine Escadeillas .
The 24-year-old secretary disappeared from her home in Ramonville, in the suburbs of Toulouse, on the morning of December 8, 1986. She had just dropped off her boyfriend at a bus stop and was about to go to work.
His body has never been found.
But the traces discovered on her third floor landing, on the stairs and in the cellar of her building leave no doubt about the young girl's fatal fate.
In this extraordinary case, never closed thanks to the tenacity of Simone, Nicole and Jean, the sisters and brother of the victim, an ex-boyfriend with a sulphurous past, was worried before benefiting from a dismissal.
The gendarmes even suspected the serial killer Patrice Alègre for a time.
He asks his girlfriend to adopt the appearance of the missing
But this Friday, it is Joël Bourgeon, a father a priori uneventful and now 59 years old, who will be in the box of the accused.
Questioned as a witness nine days after Martine's disappearance, this friend of the couple was not worried for three decades.
It was a letter sent in 2016 to the public prosecutor by an acquaintance of the family which relaunched the investigation.
Its author confided in it her doubts about Joël Bourgeon, this maintenance worker who left Toulouse shortly after the disappearance despite his tenure in the public service.
The gendarmes took over the testimonies of the time, proceeded to new hearings, passed the file through the mill of the Anacrim software and assembled a new puzzle.
When one fine morning in 2019, they arrested the father of the family in Isère, at his workplace, he let himself be taken away without showing any surprise.
He even confessed while in police custody.
Summarily.
Before retracting in the office of the investigating judge.
But he had time to "show a certain cynicism about where he could have hidden the body", notes Frédéric David, the lawyer for Martine's family.
Counsel does not dwell on the accused's confessions.
He believes that, even without them, there is "a real body of serious and concordant evidence against him" to support the thesis of the friend who came to declare his love that morning and dismissed before committing the irreparable.
He remembers in particular the unexplained departure of Joël Bourgeon from Toulouse to the Lyon region, to join a holiday love.
The young girl, barely 16 at the time, and her mother testified to their surprise to see him move in with them.
“He also asked the young girl to do her hair, dress and do her nails like Martine,” underlines Frédéric David.
Not to mention his perfect knowledge of the crime scene.
The lawyer is also awaiting the testimony at the hearing of the neighbor on the 4th floor.
She saw on the stairs the back of a balding man, struggling with the victim, and according to her rather fifty years old.
However, Joël Bourgeon was 24 years old at the time of the events.
“But two reconstructions, including a recent one, show that the neighbor could not see anything”, asserts the lawyer.
"A badly put together investigation" for the defense
And this testimony is definitely eagerly awaited.
“Either he is reliable and does not correspond to my client, or he is not, in which case I remind you that he was used to rule out other suspects”, invokes Eric Mouton for the defense.
The latter wants to update “the reality of a badly put together investigation” during which, among other things, “the seals have disappeared” and which is not supported by “any objective or concrete element”.
"It's the method that bothers me, the gendarmes went straight on Joël Bourgeon, taking up the elements that stuck with him, when they should have started the investigation from scratch".
Eric Mouton describes a man "worn out" by three and a half years of pre-trial detention.
Facing him on Friday, and for a long week, there will be the Escadeillas family, undermined by 35 years of painful questions.
And whose fixed idea is to "give a burial" to Martine.
Justice
Toulouse: How a suspect was arrested 32 years after the disappearance of Martine Escadeillas
Justice
Disappearance of Martine Escadeillas in Toulouse: The alleged murderer will be tried in July 2022, 35 years later
Justice
Murder
Court case
Toulouse
Occitania
Cold box